MOSCOW, March 15 (Itar-Tass) — State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin urged the deputies on Wednesday to continue the practice to invite members of the non-parliamentary parties at meetings of the lower house of parliament and offered to draft relevant regulations. Meanwhile, Naryshkin offered to tighten the control over the work of the government. The speaker also spelled out the program, which will make the State Duma prestige higher.
The program of the speaker contains five points to make the prestige of the State Duma higher, the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily notes. First of all, the parliament should be taken in the society as an authoritative venue for the dialogue on all key, basic issues, which concern Russian citizens. Secondly, the voters should be aware how bills are being drafted, how convincing the arguments of parliamentary factions and separate deputies are. Thirdly, parliamentary factions “should respect each other and work in the way of cooperation.” On the fourth place, Naryshkin asked the deputies “to get rid of false stereotypes, which are left as the legacy from the early stage of the formation of Russian parliamentarism.” On the fifth place, in the formation of a new government the parliament should participate in the debates of not only perspective goals of Russian development, working plans of the Cabinet, but also issues of cooperation between various branches of power.
Each State Duma faction should “protect its point of view in the maximum possible open dialogue,” but “to work in cooperation” with others. Sergei Naryshkin urged the deputies to take this style in work, the Kommersant writes. The oppositionists doubt that the State Duma majority of the United Russia Party will abandon the style, which they got accustomed to in the last few years, while the State Duma was not considered as a rostrum for debates, the newspaper notes.
The oppositionists particularly liked the statement that “the point of view should be protected in open debates.” However, “the sixth State Duma works in the same way so far, the vice-speaker from the A Just Russia faction Nikolai Levichev told the newspaper. According to him, all decisions are taken not even by the United Russia faction, but the party presidium, and the opposition “has the only chance to voice your opinion, but not to influence on decision-making.” Levichev noted that the discipline in the faction of the parliamentary majority did not change even after members of the All-Russian Popular Front joined the faction. During the elections they were called as “independent representatives of the civil society.” The faction of the parliamentary majority “just turns down the bills of the opposition deputies and even does not consider it necessary to provide arguments for their decision,” a deputy from the LDPR faction Maxim Rokhmistrov stated. According to him, “Sergei Naryshkin should have addressed his appeal for an open dialogue to United Russia, rather than the opposition.” “Sergei Naryshkin’s speech was good. For the last 20 years he heard many good speeches, after which nothing had changed,” the deputy chairman of the CPRF faction Sergei Reshulsky stated.